Hunters frequently utilize elevated seats or platforms, known as tree stands, as a vantage point from which to observe and to hunt wild game. Such platforms provide a suitable temporary observation station in which the hunter may be comfortably concealed from his surrounding environment. Because a hunter may occupy a tree stand for a long period of time in hard-to-access locations, and because of the patience required for a successful hunt of many species of game, it is preferable that tree stands be comfortable, roomy, well camouflaged and portable.
Tree stands have traditionally incorporated a number of collapsible features enabling them to be carried in a relatively compact package, yet quickly and easily erected to form a suitable enclosure and blind. A typical early effort found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,696, issued to Jones, features a pair of foldable grid work elements supported by a frame to which a camouflage material may be attached. This device, however, required a substantial number of assembly and disassembly steps, and even when folded, the Jones hunting stand is only as small as the smallest of the platform elements from which the unit was comprised. Similar limitations are present in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,982, issued to Kenji. This tent-like tree-mounted hunting blind requires a complex collection of articulated components, and though collapsible, presents a collapsed volume at least as large as one of the several seating plates which form the base of the unit.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,512, Bean discloses a foldable hunting blind for tree-mounted use incorporating, like the prior art, a complex collection of frame elements which accordingly dictates equally complex assembly.
A better effort at solving the problem of the volume of the folded tree stand was made by Plinta, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,849, which utilizes a plurality of hoops to provide shape and rigidity to what is essentially a cylindrical blind, which may be collapsed, but only into a package as small as the circumference of the hoop-like frame elements.
These and other structures all suffer from the limitations that assembly and disassembly is either too complex or the resulting folded blind occupies too large a volume to be conveniently packed into the hunting area from a remote location. Likewise, most of the prior art structures are excessively heavy and expensive.